Charles Harder of Harder LLP has a formidable track record suing media outlets, with a $140 million jury verdict for Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media and a reported $2.9 million settlement on behalf of Melania Trump, who sued U.K's Daily Mail for libel

But Harder's latest legal salvo on behalf of President Donald Trump triggered widespread disdain from fellow lawyers on Twitter.

Last week, Harder sent a four-page letter to CNN, claiming that the network has violated the Lanham Act by, well, actually he doesn't quite explain … something about "misrepresentations to the public, to your advertisers, and others" that the cable news network practices "excellence in journalism" but is actually biased against President Trump.

According to Harder, "Never in the history of this country has a president been the subject of such a sustained barrage of unfair, unfounded, unethical and unlawful attacks by so-called 'mainstream' news, as the current situation." He urged CNN executives Jeffrey Zucker and David Vigilante to contact him "to discuss an appropriate resolution of this matter, which would include a substantial payment of damages."

Harder's legal peers were withering in their assessment.

On Friday, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Ted Boutrous tweeted, "This is an absolutely ridiculous letter. No serious lawyer would ever think of sending such a frivolous letter making such a baseless threat."

Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal added, "Trump is threatening to sue CNN. If the legal claims in his letter are any indication, I would think CNN will want him to sue and have a court decide this one."

Joyce Alene, who from 2009 to 2017 was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, tweeted "This looks like a classic Trump effort to distract from a crisis. Indicates he's feeling desperate. Nothing to these 'claims.'"

Berkeley Law professor Orin Kerr mocked Harder's assertion that CNN was violating the Latham Act and "other applicable laws." Kerr suggested that "'Other applicable laws' include Murphy's Law and Jude Law."

University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law Professor Alexandra Roberts called it "a strange letter for a number of reasons—for one, it does not explicitly ask that CNN cease & desist, but instead jumps straight to threat of suit for damages, which creates declaratory judgment jurisdiction for @cnn."

Bill Moran, a defamation specialist at Hawgood Moran in Maryland, wrote "As a legal matter, this letter from Charles Harder is complete nonsense. His reputation as a successful litigator aside, one would hope that CNN safely deposited this in the nearest waste receptacle."